Kukla's Korner Hockey

During this time, things changed in a major way at my place of employment. Us writer types were told about a change of philosophy. For a good four years or so, we were all about original writing, game coverage, features, analysis, all that jazz. I’m not sitting here telling you we were ever a true journalistic news site — MLB.com and NFL.com were light years ahead of where we were in that regard — but we were slowly taking strides away from worrying about PR and team reactions to negative news and that type of thing. It was a fun place to work that you felt was going in the right direction.

But that philosophy changed. We were told that going forward, we were no longer being judged on “original writing," and instead we were being judged on how quickly we could rewrite breaking news from other people. For example, a reporter in Vancouver tweets that Roberto Luongo is starting over Cory Schneider. We would now be judged on how quickly we could rewrite three paragraphs about that and get it on the site.

Game coverage was also being reined in, and while a feature on Luongo or Schneider wasn’t frowned upon, it wasn’t what the site would be about.

-Dave Lozo, formerly of NHL.com. Read more to find out what he is doing now.

The link to the full article is blocked from work, but if he is discussing his time at NHL.com then he is on the mark why I rarely ever go to that site for anything. It is very hard to find actual stories and analysis anymore.

In addition, generally, it seems that is what journalism has become: News is broke by tweet ( x number of characters or less) and then re-hashed over and over and over by all the other outlets. No substance. No story. The system is squeezing the quality out of the system.

That is what makes this site so great and I frequent here; that you guys dig up some good nuggets worth reading.

Why did/do people ever go to the league site for that stuff anyways? I never have understood that concept…

What, you think the league’s own website is going to give unbiased information that is not agenda-driven? I obviously go to NHL.com for scores & recaps, stats, etc (though less and less as other news sites catch up). But anything else is pointless.

I found NHL.com to be annoyingly structured when I visited it a few times back in the 07-09 stretch. Now I get all my “news” from here, my scores from espn.com/NHL and see absolutely no need for NHL.com.